Dangerous game in Jordan

Was King Hussein’s ousting of his brother, Crown Prince Hassan, and replacement by his son Abdallah as heir to the throne only a few days before his death part of an American “plot”? In the United States a number of papers claimed that the Clinton administration had a hand in elimating Hassan. Obviously, no-one would deny there were other factors at work: rivalries within the royal family, pressure from the intelligence services (see Lamis Andoni’s article) etc. Whatever the case may be, the White House sees Jordan as pivotal in its strategy for the entire region - the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as that with Iraq - and certainly had its part to play in the drama that unfolded in Amman at the end of January.

David Wurmser, a Middle East specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, wrote in the Wall Street Journal (1): “This January 5th meeting appears to have been the turning point. Just days before in an interview, King Hussein emphatically and quickly dismissed rumours that he had any intention of removing his brother as heir... The tone changed dramatically after the January 5th Clinton-Hussein meeting. By January 8th detailed articles appeared in Arab papers explaining not only that King Hussein had changed his mind, but explaining the circumstances that led to the change and the sequence of events that would follow.”

Wurmser believes that it was in summer 1998 when there was alarming news of the king’s illness that the Unites States grew anxious about the succession. The US feared that Prince Hassan could put “the stability of the kingdom” at risk with his apparent hostility to the Palestinians - who make up a majority of the Jordanian population - and also his support of the Muslim Brothers. A US National Security Council official went to see King Hussein on his hospital bed before Christmas to tell him of Washington’s concerns. But it was only on 5 January when he met President Clinton in the presence of General Samih al Batikhi, the powerful Jordanian intelligence chief, that Hussein was convinced. The author recalls that the general was one of the main Jordanian organisers of an attempted CIA coup in 1996 against Saddam Hussein that ended in a complete fiasco.

Was there any justification for this US preference? David Wurmser thinks not. Prince Hassan, though sensitive to Palestinian suffering, was hostile to the PLO and Yasser Arafat, and was also known for his opposition to Saddam Hussein. Hassan would have been in the best position to lead the transition that Jordan needs. The changes that have now taken place on the contrary “open the door for dangerous games in Amman - a circumstance that could lead to the collapse of Jordan as we know it.”

Another article, this time by the Washington Post’s influential columnist Jim Hoagland (2), recalls that King Hussein had been “on the CIA payroll” during the 1970s, though it had not stopped him allying himself with Syria’s president, Hafez Al Assad, in the 1980s, and with Saddam Hussein during the Gulf war. According to Hoagland, there is a clear impression, “justified or not”, that the Clinton administration “and specifically the CIA” contributed to the ousting of Hassan: and “Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s rush to Amman to bless the changeover has had the unfortunate effect of cementing that impression.”

The United States’ support for the young King Abdallah was made very clear by Bill Clinton’s presence at the funeral of King Hussein. In addition, Clinton asked Congress quickly to vote through the $300m special aid package allocated to Jordan under the Wye Plantation agreement of October 1998, on top of the $225m aid that Jordan already gets each year. But is that enough to guarantee a smooth transition?